Big Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Village Divided in Two by the Cold War Era
A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.
Preserving History
Months after their own division was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”
“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”
Past Origins
Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, going to the same religious building and placing their kids to the very same school.
After the War Division
Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.
Intensification of Frontier Restrictions
After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.
Exhibition Center Creation
It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled early on about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was significantly strengthened.
Preserved Installations
Two guard towers are maintained together with a series of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.
Larger Background
The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.
Hamlet Daily Living
Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.
Visitors
For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.
Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.
Current Evolutions
The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is likely to
